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A Thai movie went viral for reliably moving cinemagoers to tears, including those determined not to shed any. The title “How to Make Millions before Grandma Dies” explains the plot: An unemployed grandson is trying to get rich from his dying grandmother’s inheritance. While the film is well made, it is a tearjerker also because its themes resonate with many. What lessons on family life can we draw from it?
Warning: Mild spoilers ahead
The early scenes of the movie draw a picture of a typical family. Amah, the elderly grandmother, is superstitious, stubborn, naggy and holds traditional beliefs about gender roles. (We are even told she has an “old people’s smell”!) Having been widowed for a long while, she has three children, each of whom represents a stereotype. There is the successful and impatient eldest son who barely has time or affection for his mother. To complete the stereotype, his wife is unpopular in the family. The other son is the youngest child, dearly beloved despite being jobless, a drunkard and piled with debts. The one daughter she has is a doting one, but her affection is not reciprocated because she is not a son. Amah only has two grandchildren. The eldest son has a very young child who is innocent and kind towards her. The child of the only daughter, M, is our protagonist. He is a university dropout. Constantly on his gadgets, he is uninterested in anything else. The news that Amah has cancer could not faze him in the slightest. Precisely because this family is typical, it is easy for us to see in them some resemblance to our own families.
But the pace of the film soon accelerates as it moves on from setting up the characters. We are shown the development that shocks our sense of decency; M decides to live with Amah and care for her so that she would favour him more than his two uncles and grant him her house when she passes away. We are left wondering what would happen next. Will M get his wish? Will Amah find out? What would have happened if this were to happen to our own family?
I think one way to characterise this longest phase of the film is mutual discovery. After M moves in, he constantly attempts to please Amah, while Amah often scolds him for his insensitivity and mistakes. Along the way, unintentionally, they develop a relationship they have no experience for. M has never known what it is like to spend so much time with an elderly person, while Amah has never been close to someone from Generation Z. It is learning by trial and error, with many misunderstandings along the way. But they both grow as a result; Amah overcomes her fear of burdening her caregivers, while M learns to love a family member in need without conditions. It is this development that is so ordinary and extraordinary at the same time that resonates deeply with many viewers.
Now, if the family portrayed in the movie is typical, and the story resonates with many of us, I think we can draw some lessons on family life from it. In fact, we need them urgently.
Singapore is one of the fastest-ageing societies in the world. Over time, there will be increasingly more seniors than ever in numbers and proportion. Caring for their physical and mental health is and will continue to be a massive challenge. But we must resist the lurking temptation to see the elderly as unwelcome burdens because every human person is made in the image of God and all persons have infinite worth.
Clearly, looking after the elderly means that we need to attend to their concerns and well-being. A source of tension for seniors is the constant fear of becoming a deadweight for the family, which is a struggle Amah faces. This is why Pope St John Paul II teaches in Familiaris consortio that “the Church must help everyone to discover and to make good use of the role of the elderly within the civil and ecclesial community, in particular within the family.” If we want our seniors to live with dignity and confidence, we need to ensure that they are always integrated well into our society. While traditionally there is a role that the elderly have always had, which is grandparenting, it is becoming more difficult for them to do so because of the increasing intergenerational gap between grandparents and grandchildren. This rift stems from technological changes that have been deeply instrumental in changing the habits and thinking of each generation, not to mention the kind of media consumed by each generation can be so different.
But M and Amah have shown us that this increasing chasm is not insurmountable. Even if their relationship begins without the best motives, maturing is possible. What the grandmother and grandson need is time. The more time they spend together and the more they want to learn about one another, the less their generational difference matters. After all, our humanity is common to all.
An important lesson we can draw from the film, then, is that we need to help create more opportunities for grandparents and grandchildren to be together. This will create a role for seniors who have grandchildren so that they do not feel unwelcome or useless, and this will help the younger generation to forge better familial relationships in an era where divisions can happen so easily and quickly. For example, schools often have parents’ meeting days. Why not have grandparents’ meeting days too? Caritas Singapore family organisations such as Montfort Care have initiatives for bringing seniors and youths together. Why not have more communities do something similar? There are many ways for government bodies, businesses and local communities to organise initiatives with the intent to let multiple generations spend time together, especially between grandparents and grandchildren.
At a time when division and disinformation spread so readily, Singapore needs to continue working on social cohesion. But as much as we have been working on interracial and interreligious harmony, perhaps we need as much attention on intergenerational friendship. As the Church of Singapore, we all can play a more important role in building this bridge.
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How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies reminds us of what truly matters (CNA, 22 June 2024)
Erwin Susanto is a staffer of Caritas Singapore. He enjoys arcane conversations on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible in the context of the Ancient Near East. (Reach out if you know what this means!) He enjoys thinking about all sorts of contemporary issues and often wonders if punditry is fun.